


but one chance is all i'll give

by silverkatana



Series: chances. [2]
Category: H.O.T. (Band), SECHSKIES (Band)
Genre: Gen, Goodbyes, M/M, arguably platonic, no happy endings this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 17:31:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17105006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverkatana/pseuds/silverkatana
Summary: from kim jaeduck, to tony an.





	but one chance is all i'll give

**Author's Note:**

> just a disclaimer that this is in no way related to reality

Why are you slipping away from me?

 

I have watched you be the epitome of perfection from head-to-toe. I have watched you through all your rose-lens lies and deceit and your false pretences here and there and everywhere.

 

And I have watched you come undone before me, your lies slipping away into nothingness, your realities unfurling before both of our eyes, your scared self hiding behind the fabrications of a better life, away from your reality, away from the revelation that you are anything but perfect, away from the horrible realisation that people out there have a better life than you do. 

 

It is a terrible thing to comprehend, the fact that your life is not perfect or that it is not the best. It is a sickening feeling, a nauseous lurching-in-the-stomach type of sensation, the bitter understanding that even your own lies cannot fool yourself (because if only the lies worked, you would have been happier, right?). 

 

But for a while I believed that we were going to be okay - when you let all your secrets spill across your shattered realities like rose petals falling to the ground, when I held you close till I could feel your harshly-beating heart against my own, and you promised me that you would let go of all these lies and that you would stop these images that you have upheld for far too long.

 

Was I foolish to believe you?

 

To think that you really did slowly start to believe that you were  _ good enough _ \- that you did not have to be perfect, that you were doing okay, that no one’s life was perfect? To think that you understood that, that you no longer had that envious wistfulness colouring your heart and mind shades of dark black-green, that we would have a fresh start?

 

Was I foolish to think that you were everything that I thought you were?

 

Your bad habits are coming back right before my eyes. Your insecurities are flaring, and I can see the way your jaw tightens when some acquaintance you barely know buys some half-a-million-dollar Bentley that we cannot and do not need to afford, I can see the way you’re putting on more makeup than usual when recording shows to cover up the dark circles under your eyes and the pores on your skin as though covering up your physical flaws will hide the way your mind is crumbling to pieces into the dark labyrinth that I once pulled you from.

 

I can see the way you go to clubs and drink until you turn up almost passed out at the doorstep at 3am because of how your other old friends are partying all day with their girlfriends and you’re trying your best to pretend you have a social life when the only one you talk to most of the time is me. I can see the way you find some sort of false happiness in having branded clothes and sneakers even when you barely wear them because they’re expensive and it makes you feel like you have been successful in life with good finances.

 

Your insecurities have taken over both your heart and your head, and I can see it from the way you absentmindedly ask me, “Jaeduck-ah, do you want to go out and eat? I’ll treat.” despite having the refrigerator chock-full of leftover food from cheap fast food deliveries we’ve had for the other 6 out of 7 days of the week. Is it because your distant relative is eating full-course meals at fancy restaurants all the time when you are supposed to be the successful one in the family?

 

You are falling apart, and you are trying to seem perfect once again. You are trying hard, so hard, to rebuild the walls that you broke down, to revive the falsehoods that you once surrounded yourself with.

 

Too long has passed since your days of being overly perfect; too many days have passed with empty ramen cups and drinking soju at two-somethings in the morning and sleeping till eleven-thirty and eating whatever is the nearest reasonably-priced food available for delivery around. Your dark circles are visible even with your makeup, you have aged past eighteen, and even with makeup and accessories, your body betrays you with the way it aches and creaks when you have to do too many physically-exerting activities.

 

You have become imperfect. 

 

At first, when I saw that side of you, the oh-so-human side of you, I was confused. A scared wonderment, if you would. It was fascinating and terrifying at the same time to realise that you were not everything that I thought you were. 

 

But I liked that you a lot more.

 

Because it was you.

 

Eventually, I began to fall in love with all the little imperfections that made you  _ you _ , and when you showed your true colours to me without restraint I was happy. You became the everything that I wanted to think of you as, a normal human being without a perfect life, just like me, just like everyone.

 

You are beginning to revert to your old habits - you are closing in on yourself, layering the walls up over and over again, and recently you’ve been telling little lies to all your friends trying to make it seem like your life is going completely fine. I live with you, and I see you every day, yet it’s getting hard for even me to keep track of what are your truths and what are your lies.

 

Do I have to begin thinking of you the same way as I thought of you back then, too?

 

I don’t want to live with a stranger.

 

This you is not you. “What do you think of this car?” you ask me, showing me a picture of a silver car that I know you will not buy because we would be foolish to spend that kind of money. “I’m going out with my friends,” you tell me, and I do not respond to that because I can no longer distinguish whether you are lying or telling the truth.

 

_ What joy does lying bring you? _

 

I look at your hunched frame, your unsmiling face even when you are fast asleep, the emptied soju bottles at the bottom of your bed and the dust that is beginning to pile up on all your belongings. 

 

_ No matter how much you lie, talking about it and pretending alone won’t make your life better, would it? _

 

_ In the end, you would just be a liar, and your life would be the same. _

 

I whisper out a “goodnight”, and I cannot bring myself to say your name because this isn’t you anymore. There is a blurred line between caring about public appearances and caring  _ too much  _ \-  _ fuck, hyung, all the people you’re trying to impress don’t even know you as much as I do so won’t you look at me instead? _

 

It is a saddening thing, to see someone you once thought you knew so well turn into a complete stranger before your eyes in the very same place where you learned every little thing about him.

 

I don’t want to let you become a stranger, but is it too late by now?

 

Some of your lies don’t add up anymore. It’s a disappointing thing, because all it does it make your deceit even more prominent than before. It hurts me, bit by bit, because I am coming to the realisation that our promise apparently did not mean as much to you as it meant to me.

 

You promised me that you would just be you.

 

Was that, too, a lie?

 

You make me feel a lot of things. 

 

Sadness, a heavy-weighted despondency at the revelation that you never cared about me the same way that I cared about you -  _ don’t tell me I’m wrong because how could you be smiling and walking past me when I am falling apart all because of you? _

 

Bitterness, because I’d bet my entire fortune that you don’t feel any sense of happiness or accomplishment from people complimenting things that you have not done and people liking the you who is not you -  _ how long can you keep up this one-man masquerade party? _

 

Anger, racing heartbeats and spiteful thoughts that I’d rather not have, because you clearly don’t care about the promise that we made anymore -  _ and don’t tell me that it’s a lie because I’m sick and tired of your lies. _

 

I gave you one chance, a starting over from a fresh new page back when I loved the imperfections in you that even you could not. But then you took the book, and you ripped every neatly-written chapter to shreds, and now you are rewriting your own story, and this time I am just a side character in it.

 

“Seungho-hyung,” I say to you one night when you come back from your life of false pretences, and you stare at me with that hollow-eyed stare that indicates that you hear me but you’re not listening, “I’m leaving.”

 

If you feel anything at all, you do not show it, and not a word leaves your mouth.

 

I gave you one chance (and then some, in all my hesitance and lingering, because I am a fool and thought that the you who I knew everything about would come back one day) and that is all I will give.

 

I would give you another chance if I could, if both my head and my heart weren’t screaming at me to leave you and seek a place that is happier, free, devoid of this web of lies and deceit and falsified images. 

 

“I’m sorry,” I continue speaking, and my voice is impossibly loud in the silence, and you continue to look at me with your eyes glossed over as though your mind has run away with your soul, “But you’re gone and you’re not coming back, and I don’t want to wait like this.”

 

I reach out to touch your hand one more time. Your skin is cold. Are you even alive? Maybe, maybe not. If only it were true - it would make it easier to understand you than whatever mess this is right now.

 

But you are alive, from the way your breath escapes in steady rhythms as though you are not one bit affected by what I am saying, and perhaps you’re not, and maybe that’s why my heart is breaking even more in my chest.

 

As I turn to leave, I hear the catch in your throat, the way you move forward one footstep at a time, before the words, desperate and lost, hang in the air. “Don’t go.”

 

Did you think that I was joking? That I broke the promise that I would be there to love you for everything that you are -  _ were _ ?

 

But you broke it first, because as I look at you I cannot recognise the one who I swore to love.

 

“For what it’s worth,” I cannot bring myself to be angry at you, no matter what you’ve done, “Thank you for all the times that you were you.”

 

_ I have run out of patience waiting for you to come back when I know that you will not, and the chapters to our story have come to a close. _

 

_ I hope that when you rewrite your story that doesn’t have me in it, your last page will be of a happy ending. _

 

Seeing the brokenness on your -  _ should I call you Tony now, since I no longer know where Seungho is? -  _ face makes me want to halt in my tracks and hold you close again and beg you to come back to me, but I know you better than you know yourself from the way I’ve loved you more than you loved yourself for the time when we were happy together.

 

You’re not coming back to me.

 

_ I still find in it me somewhere to love you. _

 

_ But one chance is all I’ll give. _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
